Say, I really sympathize with your problem.  I've suffered about 6 years with SPSS for Windows early versions.   I have been sufficently discouraged that I haven't considered getting newer editions since the sales reps can't answer my questions about improved data and report file conversions, imports, and exports.   In my work I've had to use large, 500,000 record, data files downloaded from an IBM AS-400 that would not produce any file format that SPPS would read.  I had to use Data Junction, Alpha 4, and/or Access database to read the downloaded files and then translate then to ".dbf" format for SPSS to use.   SPSS could then output statistics by census tract in a virtually unusuable report ".lst" or text format that would not give results in a spreadsheet format of neat columns and rows for importation into Excel or Mapinfo for my final analysis of 366 census tracts.  That is a lot of drags and drops to get the stats by tract and year.  Many times I just gave up on SPSS and used Alpha 4 or Access to output the most simple descriptive stats by tract and year.
       Any ideas that readers can come up with will be appreciated.  Maybe I can start to use SPSS again.